Today, physicians initially learn about sickness from the sickest of the sick… “Tertiary care” hospitals collect the rarest of the rare. We have “zebra farms.”… Hospitals are remarkably efficient for displaying diseases in several stages of development or varying manifestations as well as for studying their response to treatments. On one ward may be collected all manner of cancer or infection or genetic diseases. The benefits we have enjoyed in medical understanding from such collections is not to be underestimated. However, along the way, these collections have helped us to ignore the denominator populations from which they were drawn, as well as the possibility of taxonomies based upon other features than bodily diseases.
Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers
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